


Till Escrow Do Us Part

by acaramelmacchiato



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, angry married house flippers au, finn is the senior intern, poe dameron is a real estate agent, rey is the intern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 16:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6122812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaramelmacchiato/pseuds/acaramelmacchiato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, How Hux and Kylo Burnt Down a Home and Saved Their Marriage</p><p>Hux and Kylo are married and flip houses for a living. Rey and Finn are their long-suffering unpaid house-flipping interns. Millicent is their cat who gets feline acupuncture. It's in LA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kylo Ren spent a lot of his time thinking about proportion, symmetry, and form. He knew that his own face subverted generic handsomeness, but it drew the eye diagonally and delivered visual harmony through the repetition of his dark hair and eyes. He found the result satisfying, but reflected in Hux’s mirrored Ray-Ban Clubmasters, it appeared to be pouting.  
  
He squinted and leaned in, smoothing one of his eyebrows with a knuckle.  
  
“Excuse me,” said Hux, “Narcissus. Did you hear what I said?”  
  
“Not the specifics. Something about Chipotle?”  
  
Hux crossed his arms. “Ren, I am one hundred percent serious, we’re running too close to the line to afford guacamole right now, and if I catch you again it’s coming out of the _interior budget_.”  
  
“So it comes from the interior budget. Speaking of which, where are we on the pool tile?”  
  
“Your choice. One-by-one slate, or one-by-one blue blend.”  
  
“I wanted --”  
  
“I know you wanted to hand-pattern a five color _modern honeycomb_ , but I just told you we couldn’t accord guacamole, so what do you think the answer is?”  
  
“I thought we were sacrificing the guacamole so we could afford the tile.”  
  
The small, mid-construction LA yard was quiet for a few moments. Kylo heard the dry sound of palm trees in the wind.  
  
“I am going to have a stroke,” said Hux. “Right here. And it will be your fault.”  
  
“Fine,” said Kylo. “I’ll use my power of attorney to pull the plug on you and order five colors of tile. Then I will work through my grief by hand-patterning a modern honeycomb in the pool.”  
  
“Excuse me,” said Rey behind Kylo’s right shoulder.  
  
“I’m going inside,” said Hux. His voice was quiet and tense, the way it was last year when he had taken the keys to Kylo’s Cayenne and thrown them into the ocean from Justin Bobby Brescia’s yacht.  
  
“Sorry,” Rey said again. They ignored her.  
  
“Go,” said Kylo. “Have your stroke inside. No one will ever find you, because I’ll be out here trying to transform one-by-one blue blend glass tile into something modern if I have _to spill my blood_ into the grout in an atomic pattern.”  
  
“Hi,” said Rey for the third time, and waved a little. “So I’m driving into town to buy gravel, and I was going to pick up lunch, but … it can wait.”  
  
“It can’t wait, you have an appointment. I’m not paying you in experience to learn that most marital disputes are about money,” said Hux.  
  
“They're also about control. Can you stop at Chipotle?” asked Kylo.  
  
Hux’s Clubmasters flashed.  
  
Rey hadn’t survived more than half her internship by being an idiot, so she started to back away, but answered honestly: “Yeah.”  
  
“I want,” said Kylo, “a burrito bowl with extra--”  
  
“Don’t,” said Hux.  
  
“We can’t waste her time, can we? Extra guacamole.”

* * *

“So the good news is that the door you ripped off the hinge was going to come out anyway,” said Rey the next morning.  
  
The door was lying halfway inside the foyer. The rubber seal had drawn a dark black line on the patio concrete.  
  
“That’s why I ripped it off,” said Kylo, shaking the ice cubes in his iced americano.  
  
Hux stepped wordlessly around him and opened the refrigerator, noticing there was no coffee for him but frostily not remarking on it. He took out a bottle of Dasani water and rearranged the remaining bottles so there were an even six in the front.  
  
Kylo watched him in disgust.  
  
“So,” said Rey. “I scheduled gravel for 11.”  
  
“Fine,” said Hux. “I did ask for 10:30, didn’t I?”  
  
“They open at 10, and it’s a 45-minute drive in the truck,” Rey replied.  
  
“That’s why you have to bargain with them.”  
  
“On their opening time?”  
  
“On anything you possibly can. So, fine, Rey, you stay here. Ren and I have a showing at Outpost at three, so tell Finn to be there at 10 to start cleaning up. I’ll be coming straight from the bank, so I’ll take the car. Ren, that’ll give you enough time to finalize a flooring plan. I want to put an order in before close of business today. When the showing is over I want Finn to drive to Paseo del Serra and we can have our check-out meeting here. He can pick up Millicent from the vet on his way.”  
  
“And then,” said Kylo, narrowing his eyes, “Hux will end the evening doing his nightly Scrooge McDuck backstroke in the pool of pennies he’s saved by limiting our creative resources, while the cat and I share a tin of Fancy Feast.”  
  
“You’ll be lucky,” said Hux, “if it is Fancy Feast.”  
  
Kylo bit his straw.

* * *

“Do you ever wonder how two guys like that end up together?” Rey asked. She had driven to meet Finn at the vet with the cat’s crate, and Millicent was yowling horrifically as they tried to stuff her into it.  
  
“Do you honestly want me to not say Grindr?”  
  
“They got married in like 2008,” said Rey. “Your face is bleeding really bad.”  
  
“Well, I don’t know, grab her -- by the -- Jesus! Get her arms.”  
  
“Arms?”  
  
“Some of the limbs, Rey, limit the number of limbs that are slashing at me if you want me to be bleeding less.”  
  
Rey grabbed for the cat, and it riposted across her forearm. “Ow!” she said. “Did you know this thing just got acupuncture?”  
  
“Well she’s dishing out some … haphazard puncture,” said Finn, wiping blood from his eyes.  
  
“I’m just saying, I think she’s still wound up. It’s probably because there’s tension in her home life.”  
  
“Are you serious?” said Finn.  
  
“I hope you don’t lose that eye,” said Rey. “It could get infected really easily. Cats get their claws in litterboxes, and who knows what’s at the vet. And Millicent walks on Hux and Ren’s sex sheets all the time.”  
  
“Please help me get the cat in the crate,” said Finn, his voice breaking.

* * *

They shared a car on the way back, because if someone didn’t keep an arm on the cat crate, Millicent could influence Finn’s steering. 

  
Rey read her findings aloud: “On June 12th, 2010, Kylo Ren, a design intern at Thomas Callaway, and General Hux, an associate at Hilton & Hyland, were married in a private home in Plum Island, Massachusetts. The wedding was attended, notably, by Adam DiVello and Liz Gateley.”  
  
“Damn,” said Finn. “I didn’t think that was really his first name.”  
  
“What, General?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’ve seen his driver’s license. It’s General.”  
  
“That explains ... something,” said Finn. When he stopped at a red light, Millicent stretched a paw out from the crate and raked his hand. He looked at her sympathetically.  
  
“I’m going to keep reading. ‘The ceremony was performed under a trellis with white wisteria. Reading from prepared vows, the grooms promised love and patience, to share happiness and pain, and to support each other through good times and bad. The ceremony concluded with a local band playing “‘Round Midnight.” The reception was held at the historic Inn on the Beach.’ Well. That’s kind of sweet.”  
  
“Too bad they’re assholes now,” said Finn. “They ruined their cat.”  
  
“They’re not assholes all the time,” said Rey. “And the jazz thing is nice.”  
  
“Sure,” said Finn. “Yeah, it’s nice. It sounds nice.”  
  
He was stopped at another light, and the cat was quiet. The sun was sinking below the hills and into the city. Rey rolled down the window.  
  
When they returned to Paseo del Serra, Kylo was throwing plates out of the broken doorframe and onto the patio. Hux was holding up his end of the argument from the stairs.  
  
“I don’t care if you drink bottled water, you paranoid bean-counter,” Kylo was yelling. “I’ll poison your _ear_. Like Old Hamlet.”  
  
Rey set the cat free at the front door. Once out of the crate, she went upstairs too quickly for the naked eye to follow.  
  
“Hi,” said Rey. “I have Finn. The cat got acupuncture but she isn’t relaxed. I think it’s all the smashing plates.”  
  
Kylo slowly set one of the plates on the counter top. “Now the cat has a problem with my creative process?”  
  
“The uhm, cat acupuncturist--”  
  
“Vet,” said Hux.  
  
“The vet said you could make her listen to some jazz.”  
  
Kylo raised an eyebrow. “The cat needs to listen to jazz.”  
  
“In a calm environment,” said Rey.  
  
Kylo put his remaining two plates away. “I don’t know why the vet thinks she isn’t doing that already. Finn, find somewhere else for your blood to go, we have to sell this place.” 

* * *

 

Kylo and Hux lived in a five bedroom, four bath Mediterranean in Outpost Estates. It was a property they both hated, but it had been re-listed twice and languished for five months at an $800,000 general discount, so it was beginning to feel like home.  
  
“You know what people say about this place,” said Finn, stopping by the office to check his to-do list. Kylo looked up from his drafting table, and almost smacked his skull against Hux’s chin.  
  
“If you didn’t stick your face in my work,” said Kylo, “we’d have to take fewer trips to the ER to have your tongue surgically reattached.”  
  
“If I didn’t keep an eye on your progress, you’d never get anything done,” said Hux. “It’s a retaining wall, not the Duomo.”  
  
“And if you’d been around pedaling the mundane gospel of the _bottom line_ in the fifteenth century, maybe we wouldn’t have that particular artistic precedent to refer to when you want to squeeze a couple hundred thousand dollars out of plaster in Beverly Hills.”  
  
“Well then, Arnolfo di Cambio, you’ve got about forty-five seconds to decide if you want flowers or succulents in your masterpiece.”  
  
Finn cleared his throat. “So like I was saying, you know what people say about this place?”  
  
Kylo gripped his pencil in his fist. “Succulents.”  
  
“Good choice,” said Hux. “There’s a drought. Finn, is there something you’d like to say? Since you are here instead of on the roof with a leaf blower?”  
  
“Yeah,” said Finn. “So. I was reading about this place on Curbed--”  
  
“Your first mistake,” Kylo muttered.  
  
“And they were listing all the celebrities who’ve sent buyers here -- Taylor Kitsch, Brandi Glanville, Brandon Routh, Camilla Belle -- it’s like everybody in Hollywood whose expectations ended up disappointed. Curbed says brokers have started calling it _Starkiller_.”  
  
Hux tapped his chin. “Not that I care what Curbed says, but I think there’s something to that. Taunting superstition appeals to the self-made sort of ... thing.”  
  
“We need to have the house saged again,” said Kylo. “I don’t care about Curbed either, but, you know, just in case."  
  
Hux sighed. “Finn, clean the gutters. Then schedule someone to come sage.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Poe Dameron,” said the agent they booked the next morning. He sat uncomfortably in the sunken living room, facing Hux across his open portfolio, and cast nervous glances at Kylo, who was looming near the exit. “Wow, you guys really went to town with the sage.”  
  
“We don’t like to leave anything up to fate,” said Hux. “Finn, bring Mr. Dameron a shot of espresso over ice.”  
  
“Hey, that’s my drink,” said Poe, looking between Kylo and Hux. “Like, exactly. How did you…”  
  
“Like I said,” said Hux. “Nothing to chance. I hope you’ll appreciate that the home’s temperature has been set to an exact 69 degrees, which I understand is your preference.”  
  
Poe adjusted his tie. “Wow.”  
  
“Here’s your espresso,” said Finn. “Let me know if it’s too much ice, or not enough espresso or, you know, any of that stuff. I'm not a barista, I'm an actor.”  
  
Poe smiled the brave smile of a broker about to hear about three floors of original Talavera flooring. "Thanks for the -- thanks. Well, I guess let’s get started.”  
  
“I’m orchestrating a full court press on this property,” said Hux. “Even since a certain article in Curbed came out, I’m eager to show it off and turn around people’s assumptions.”  
  
“I'm a broker," said Poe. "I don't read Curbed."  
  
“Neither do I,” said Kylo.  
  
“This restored estate,” said Hux, “combines old Hollywood glamor with the vernacular charm of some of LA’s first great architectural pieces. Although the approach is private and set well back in the lot, the home emerges as one of the gems of Outpost.”  
  
Finn watched them go, wondering what he had just said. 

* * *

 

“So that broker thinks they’re going to murder him,” Finn told Rey, who had been using their unsupervised free time to send tips to Curbed from the vacant poolside.  
  
“Seriously though,” said Rey. “Are they?”  
  
“I don’t know, maybe. But who wants to buy a place called Brokerkiller?”  
  
“Who wants to buy a place where each room has a color scheme?”  
  
Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. The rich.”  
  
“Well I think the guys should suck it up and live here. It suits them. The atrium for the cat. The counter-espionage-type room with the four Nest cameras. There’s even that really deep wine cellar, for when Ren finally cracks and tells Hux he’s got a nice Amontillado in the back.”  
  
Finn sighed, looked around for any new Nest cameras, and took one of the white lounge chairs next to Rey. “I guess you have a point.”  
  
“Not really,” said Rey. “I’m a total hypocrite. I keep trying to whip up some notoriety behind their backs, but only Curbed writes up my tips.”  
  
“You have a heart of gold,” said Finn, adjusting his sunglasses so less light leaked in around the frames. The pool was hypnotically bright, and glittered in aimless patterns as the light wind died down. The sun was hot without being miserable.  
  
The next thing Finn knew, someone was shaking his arm.  
  
“Hi,” said Poe Dameron. He was alone, wearing a contrast-collar shirt and no suit jacket, and he looked desperate.   
  
Finn blinked, and pulled down his sunglasses. Rey was gone. The sunlight hadn’t changed, so he couldn’t have been asleep for long. “Uhm,” he said, looking at the real estate agent in total confusion. “So this is the pool.”  
  
“I have to get out of here,” said Poe.  
  
“OK,” said Finn. “Huh?”  
  
“The ceiling beams, the tile, the color schemes -- I don’t have a buyer for this,” said Poe. “But they’re holding me hostage in there until they get my active clients. Is there like, a back exit? A secret tunnel? Escape route through the wine cellar? Scheduled airlift?”  
  
“Where are they?” said Finn. “I want to help you, buddy, but I also don’t want to lose my job.”  
  
“Upstairs,” said Poe, and looked a little ashamed. “I said I had to go outside to vape.”  
  
“You can vape inside,” said Finn. “That’s literally the point.”  
  
“I don’t vape,” said Poe. “I want to be clear about that.”  
  
“The gate’s right behind those palms.”  
  
“Thanks,” said Poe, and reached into his wallet. Finn’s eyes took in a few hundreds thirstily, but then Poe took out a business card and gave it to him while briskly shaking Finn’s other hand.  
  
Then he was gone.  
  
A moment later, Hux and Kylo spilled out of the sliding doors.  
  
“I think he got away,” Kylo was saying. “We can’t keep letting agents just slip off like that.”

* * *

 

Hux was a results-oriented person. He was exacting when it came to detail but not picky about the category -- from budgeting, to timing, scale, handwriting, dry-cleaning, grout, and noise insulation, he created and enforced standards. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about what was interesting, or even particularly good, because those things so rarely correlated with a significant return on investment. Once, at a party, Whitney Port had introduced him as a tall balance sheet.  
  
So when he was hit with an unexpected $60,000 in pool tile fees, he was only able to keep his brain from literally exploding by driving to Ballona Creek and smoking six Turkish Silvers in rapid succession under the bridge.  
  
“I won’t kill him,” he eventually decided. “I can’t afford that much quicklime.”  
  
A man walking a sweating West Highland Terrier veered to give him a wide berth.  
  
Hux tossed his last butt into the creek, prompting a look of true offense from the dog-walker, and went back to Outpost to stake out the office.  
  
When Ren returned, it was with a transparently guilty conscience. He stopped to pet the cat, locked the door behind him, and even whistled nonchalantly before journeying upstairs to find his husband.  
  
Hux was lying in wait.  
  
“So I had interesting conversation with the pool tile people,” he said, spinning his white Herman Miller executive chair around to face to door. He had a little too much torque on it, and had to put his feet down to stop the chair. “They said that the order was changed. Yesterday. Changed to five colors of honeycomb glass tile.”  
  
Ren, trapped in the doorway, put his hands in his pockets.  
  
“Was it,” he said, looking at the ceiling, then the walls, then taking his hands out of his pockets to look at them.  
  
Hux steepled his fingers. “Since it was less than two weeks in advance, this was done in person.”  
  
“Oh,” said Ren.  
  
Hux’s voice was quiet, as quiet as it had been that fateful day before the keys of the Porsche sailed into the bay, so much quieter than Justin Bobby’s laughter and the roar of the wind. “Apparently, I sent one of our interns in. A guy named Matt.”  
  
Ren was sweating. “We don’t have a Matt.”  
  
“Which is what I said, right before I asked the see the security footage.”  
  
“They let you do that?”  
  
Hux glared, and plugged his laptop’s HDMI cable into the office television. The screen showed footage of the sidewalk outside a store font. After a moment, Kylo Ren appeared in a blond wig, furtively putting on a pair of glasses.  
  
Hux paused the video.  
  
“Is there something you want to tell me?”  
  
There was a meow from the open door. Millicent had sniffed out the controversy and come upstairs.  
  
“Millicent!” Hux shouted. “Can you give us one minute?”  
  
Millicent slipped back out of the door.  
  
“You don’t have any proof,” said Ren. “It’s me in a wig. That’s not proof. You don't have anything. You don’t know everything about me, maybe it’s a … sexual thing. Blond wig, flooring storefront, you know, like a --”  
  
“You signed the new order,” said Hux, taking it gently from the desk. He was not about to brandish documents in anyone’s face, no matter how much he wanted to. “Right here. ‘Intern Matt.’”  
  
“Well,” said Ren. “Intern Matt has good taste.”  
  
When Rey got in with some checks to sign for the Paseo del Serra crew, she had her earbuds in, and breezed into the office to discover Kylo Ren in a blond wig and unflattering aviator-style glasses, bent naked over one of the white Herman Miller chairs.

She had expected his ass to look different. 

Hux stood behind him, holding a fraternity paddle in one hand and his phone in the other.  
  
“Knock, next time,” he said to Rey. “Did you feed the cat?”  
  
“Not yet,” she said.  
  
“Then go feed the cat. We’ll give Matt the intern a break for today.”

* * *

 

The next morning, Hux summoned Rey to his office with iced coffee. He looked very sinister, and the way he asked Rey to shut the door behind her didn’t help.  
  
“Outpost is a problem,” said Hux. “Every second that it stays on the market, it sinks closer to the sale value. Every second is made of money.”  
  
“Well yeah,” said Rey, gesturing at the Arne Jacobsen clock on the wall with the sign under it that read, TIME IS MONEY.  
  
“Money that we are losing.”  
  
“Not really me, though,” said Rey. “Because you don’t pay me.”  
  
“I need you to make a call for me,” he said. “Use your phone.”  
  
“Uhm,” said Rey. “Do you just need to buy drugs?”  
  
“I’ll read you the number.”  
  
The call went through on the second ring, and Hux took the phone from her before she could hear the tail end of a long, bleating growl.  
  
“Chewbacca,” said Hux, on his way to the balcony. “I need to speak with Leia.”

* * *

 

The next evening, Hux took the team out for dinner at SUR.  
  
Lisa Vanderpump, clutching a puffy dog the color of burnt flan, greeted them at the lounge. She kissed Kylo and Hux twice each on the cheek. Hux gave her a businesslike handshake; Kylo slumped his shoulders and pawed at his cheek for lipstick like a colossal toddler who had been hugged in front of his friends.  
  
“She doesn’t do that for everyone, does she?” asked Rey.  
  
“What do you mean?” said Finn, looking at himself for the fourth or fifth time in his phone camera.  
  
“Your vanity is starting to make it difficult to be your friend,” said Rey. “Are you wearing the suit jacket that agent left behind?”  
  
“It’s Richard James,” said Finn.  
  
“What, the guy?”  
  
“The jacket. The guy’s name was Poe.”  
  
“Was?” Rey leaned in confidentially. “Do you think they got him?”  
  
“No. I meant … he’s alive. He left me his card. Poe Dameron.”  
  
“Then why haven’t you tried to return the jacket? I mean, maybe he left it so you would call him.”  
  
“It’s Richard James,” said Finn.  
  
“I feel like you just keep saying men’s names,” said Rey. “Hey. Do you know who’s paying for this? I thought we couldn’t afford guacamole.”  
  
At that point, a round of complimentary and identical SUR Gimlets featuring Vanderpump Vodka arrived, and the night began to escalate. They never paid for drinks, but each round arrived with a bottle of Vanderpump Vodka displayed on the tray. Rey wondered, but she didn’t ask.  
  
It took about an hour before Kylo knocked an endive salad onto the floor in the process of reaching for Hux’s hand.  
  
Rey watched the salad fall. She was the only one. Finn kept taking snaps that played with perspective so it looked like he was pinching Thomas Girardi’s head, and Kylo and Hux were exchanging a SUR Gimlet-fueled look that crackled with sexual electricity that recalled the fraternity paddle and the blond wig.  
  
“I know I’m obnoxious sometimes,” said Kylo. He rested his hand on Hux’s bare forearm, thumb on the face of his Shinola.  
  
“You tore a door off the hinge,” said Hux. “Of a property I paid $800,000 for.”  
  
“But the door was like,” Kylo put his fork in the empty space where the salad had been. “I don’t know, $75?”  
  
Hux sighed. “You bought a wig and canceled a tile order using a fake identity.”  
  
“I’m saying -- I know what you put up with,” said Kylo. “And -- look. I’m sorry. About the Matt thing.”  
  
“It’s OK,” said Hux, looking resolutely at the bar. “It’ll be fine. I’m handling it. It's handled.”  
  
Rey put her elbows on the table and shouted into Finn’s ear: “So I think Hux is the Zodiac killer.”  
  
Then Kylo’s parents showed up. 

* * *

 

“Oh no,” said Kylo Ren, watching his mother and Han Solo take their seats. “No, no.”  
  
“No,” said Hux.  
  
“Oh no,” said Rey.  
  
“Hello?” said Finn, picking up his phone.  
  
“What are they doing here?” Kylo growled. “What is this, a setup?”  
  
Hux sighed. Finn slipped on some of the endive salad on his way out of the room.  
  
“I can’t believe the nerve,” Kylo was saying. “SUR is mine. SUR is,” he reached for Hux’s hand again, “ours.”  
  
“These gimlets are having a _very_ weird effect on you,” said Rey.  
  
“Ren and his mother have divided up most of LA,” Hux explained. “It’s like a custody agreement masterminded by Elbridge Gerry.”  
  
“Who? No, why?”  
  
“To avoid each other.”  
  
“Right, why?” said Rey.  
  
“I assume it has something to do his expulsion from Cate,” said Hux. “But I’m not about to gossip about my husband.”  
  
Rey silently chopsticked the lime out of her drink with two cocktail straws.  
  
Then Hux changed his mind and leaned forward. “But there were drugs involved,” he said, eagerly. “Or making out with a teacher. Or a really hard trigonometry class that his uncle taught, and he dropped out to avoid it.”  
  
Rey thought back to all the times she’d watched Kylo use his phone to calculate a 20% gratuity. “I’m not sure which one I believe,” she said.  
  
Kylo’s mother looked nothing like him. She had chestnut hair and a keen, interesting gaze that inhabited a middle space between Miranda Priestly and Glenn Close. She had excellent posture and laughed at something the waiter said when he brought her a glass of white wine. Kylo’s father was equally animated, straight-backed, and attractive. They looked happy and fun.  
  
Next to Rey, Kylo was hunching over a crab cake and ignoring everyone.  
  
“I know,” said Hux. “A lot of people are surprised when they learn he wasn’t raised by wolves.”  
  
“I am right here,” said Kylo.  
  
“Well, eat your crab cake.”  
  
Kylo stabbed it instead.  
  
“Petulant wolves,” said Hux. Three waiters had gathered around Kylo’s parents to listen to something delightful his mother was saying. Across the room, they attracted envious stares.  
  
Finn came back, skirting the endive salad that still hadn’t been cleaned up.  
  
“Wow,” he said. “Is that couple famous? Are they Mark Burnett and Roma Downey?”  
  
“What?” said Rey. “No. They're Kylo’s parents.”  
  
Finn stared at them. Then he looked at Kylo. “Jesus.”  
  
“How did you miss this?”  
  
“Phone,” said Finn. “My agent wants me to get this YouTube series that’s like, parodies of different sci-fi movies filmed in a Target.”  
  
“…Wow,” said Rey.  
  
“You’re jealous.”  
  
Across the room, Kylo’s mother waved to him and lifted her glass. Kylo hunched closer around the crab cake. His mother lowered her glass, looking sad. Rey was very moved.  
  
“Come to the bathroom and split a Xanax with me,” said Kylo, grabbing Hux’s wrist.  
  
When they didn’t appear for forty-five minutes, Rey and Finn snuck out into the night.

At 3:00 in the morning, Kylo and Hux's home on Outpost Drive burned to the ground. 

* * *

 

“How did you get mixed up in this?” Leia asked Rey over iced horchata lattes at Terra Mia. She had responded to Rey's requests to meet on the third try.  
  
Rey shrugged. “How does anyone get an internship these days? Kylo Ren hit me with his car while I was rollerblading. He offered me the job to apologize.”  
  
“What is it you want to be doing?”  
  
Rey shrugged. “I might get into investigating insurance fraud.”  
  
Leia stiffened.  
  
“I’m kidding,” said Rey.  
  
Leia sipped her drink, and then turned her tablet around to face Rey.  
  
_STARKILLER DESTROYED_ , read the LAist headline. _House Flippers Get Insurance Payout_   _Though_  
  
_The Beverly Hills property that may have killed Taylor Kitsch’s career burned to the ground last week under circumstances the real estate community considers “suspicious” and the Taylor Kitsch community considers “revenge.”_  
  
“I have to ask,” said Rey. “Did you do it?”  
  
Leia shrugged. “No matter what,” she said. “I love my son. I can’t see him trapped in a multi-million dollar mansion he doesn’t want, no matter how poorly he decorated it.”  
  
“So you burnt it down for the insurance?”  
  
“An electrical short burnt it down,” said Leia. “That underground grid is notoriously faulty. Luckily, it was appraised earlier in the month. But they’ve already bought a new place in Stanley Hills, and the network greenlighted another season.”  
  
“Hold on,” said Rey. "What?"


	3. Epilogue

_The Epilogue_

 

“Wow, they really edited us out of this,” said Finn, turning off the final episode of “Till Escrow Do Us Part” with a sigh of disgust that Rey considered high-handed for someone who was cast in a Youtube series subsidized by Target.  
  
“No wonder we didn’t notice that the whole thing was a reality show,” Rey said. “We were just doing all the work while they filmed around us. I think I saw part of your elbow though.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Finn, refreshing his IMDB page. “Those assholes. I could have been on this. Instead I'm playing a Stormtrooper buying Target-brand soy milk.”  
  
“I know,” said Rey. “They hit us with their cars, give us internships, now they’re hanging out with Andy Cohen and we’re just getting drunk on your couch.”

"Assholes," said Finn.

"Assholes," said Rey. "And possibly still serial killers."  
  
Finn sighed. “There were a lot of signs.”  
  
Rey nodded. “There were  _so many_ signs. The releases we signed, for one.”  
  
“I thought Poe was kidding when he talked about the show," said Finn, referring to the boyfriend whose stolen blazer he concealed in a dry-cleaning bag. "But it turned out he was kidding about not vaping. And also he works for Kylo’s mom.”  
  
Rey poured herself another glass of Ramona pinot grigio and clinked sloppily with Finn. "To Hux and Kylo," she said. "The worst angry married house flippers in LA."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's it thanks for reading! Kylo never figures out who arsoned his house but is forever wary of Friday Night Lights fans.   
> I would be happy to answer even the most seemingly-inane questions in the comments! 
> 
> Sorry in no particular order to: 
> 
> 1\. The residents and architectural committee of Outpost Estates, where certainly a home burning to toast would be a much bigger deal than this fanfiction implies
> 
> 2\. Cat acupuncturists
> 
> 3\. You, the reader
> 
> 4\. Anyone currently trying to sell a ~customized home in the year 2016
> 
> Everyone else, I await your cease & desists.


End file.
